My grandmother had to bring water from the local spring to the house. There was no running water in the house. Her last chore for the evening was to get water for washing the dinner dishes and to have enough for washing up in the morning. She was a very practical woman. She was a school teacher and spoke four languages. She never believed in ghosts or anything silly like that (her words).
One night it was a little cooler than most. She said that it was mid July and she could see her breath. While she was carrying the buckets she saw someone running down the path. At first she thought it was one of her sister-in-laws and was concerned that something was wrong. The figure running towards her seemed like it was running for its life. When it got closer she realized the figure was hard to focus on. It kept blurring in and out. When it finally got close enough she could see blood down the front of the figures dress. She dropped her buckets and started running towards the figure until she got close enough to make out better details. She said the last thing she remembers before she fainted was the figure running towards her had no head. On top of that, she could see the severed arteries and trachea exposed and bleeding. She said she thought it was screaming as it ran towards her until she realized that she was the one screaming. She passed out.
Her in-laws came looking for her after they heard the scream. They couldn't apologize enough. They knew about the figure. It was a ghost that several in the community have seen over the years. No one knows why the figure runs on the path. One person was brave enough to follow it and see it dive into the spring. It has been speculated that a woman was murdered and her body hidden in the spring years before it was a settled area.
That was the only incident my grandmother ever had with the paranormal. She still scoffed at ghost stories but she got really angry if someone tried to make fun of her story. She held to it until the day she died. She said she never went down to that spring alone again.
